Cover Story.

What In The World Is That?

Loosely Defined Global Music Struggles For An Identity-and A Bigger Audience

August 29, 1993|By Chris Heim. Special to the Tribune.

On July 10, Peter Gabriel held a press conference in Chicago, but the popular rock performer was not here to discuss his two sold-out shows in town that weekend. He came, instead, to announce an American tour of WOMAD, World of Music Arts and Dance.

Since its first festival in England in 1982, WOMAD has been recognized as one of the earliest and most important signs of the emergence-at least into popular consciousness-of world music. But argument surrounds the meaning of WOMAD's U.S. tour, which makes a stop at the World Music Theater Sept. 11.

Could it be a major turning point in commercial acceptance of the music or is it, as some say, one last grand hurrah for a "fad" whose time has come and gone?

Skeptics say world music peaked sometime in the late '80s. Thanks particularly to the success of Paul Simon's South African-inspired "Graceland" album, the doors opened, however briefly, to South African groups like Ladysmith Black Mambazo, for a few other world music acts like Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares and the Gipsy Kings and for a flurry of label and compilation activity, notably David Byrne's Brazilian and Cuban compilation albums. But all of that and the media attention around it did not translate into big hits or acts. Now some world labels, including WEA's Tropical Storm subsidiary, seem to be on hold, most majors have politely declined to enter the fray and even some staunch independent label supporters appear to be pulling back.

One problem in assessing the situation is simply that of definition. At the July press conference, Gabriel told of one musician, Kudsi Erguner, a Turkish flute player.

"He said, `I've been playing this (flute) for 30 years and I've been a folk musician, an ethnic musician and now I'm a world musician and I'm still playing the same thing the whole time.' I think what we're talking about is a marketing title to try and ease the birth into the mainstream," Gabriel, one of WOMAD's organizers, said.

World music is a catch-all term for almost anything that isn't commercial Western popular music. It's slick Afro-pop and primitive field recordings, traditional ethnic offerings and new high-tech global village fusions. It ranges from A (Andean) to Z (zouk), with stops along the way for reggae, rai, samba, soukous, merengue, mbaqanga, cumbia, calypso and a slew of other styles. But the situation could be worse. In fact, it was, said Randall Grass of Shanachie Records, one of the first U.S. labels to introduce world music here in the early '80s.

"In the old days, the international sections were a real hodgepodge of everything from beer-drinking songs to anthropological recordings of wedding dances of the pygmies. It was a dumping ground. There was no recognition of a potential audience for pop music from around the world, that the same audience that was listening to the Talking Heads or Bob Marley would also want music from around the world that appealed to them. And I think there was some interesting music being created in the early to mid '80s as artists around the world gained more access to the technology and the cross-fertilization was coming from both directions."

After those heady days, though, it looked as if world music was losing steam. One example given as proof has been the declining number of world titles from Shanachie. Grass acknowledged a change at the label, but said the meaning has been misconstrued.

"We're moving to signing artists as opposed to licensing stuff from abroad. That means we're not doing as many because it takes much more of a commitment to sign an artist. And the market did not explode in the way that some press might have led people to believe it was going to explode. There was all that hype and a lot of people dumped a lot of product into the market somewhat indiscriminately and there was a kind of glut. The same thing happened with reggae. When reggae first hit in the '70s, it really didn't have a breakthrough per se. But it found an audience and more and more people kept discovering it. Ten years later, people were still getting turned on to reggae. That's the case with world music."

Island/Mango Records was another early leader in world music in the U.S. The label home of Bob Marley and a number of other reggae artists, Mango branched out into world music in the '80s with a string of African, Brazilian and Latin titles. Again it appears that after a flurry of activity, Island, too, has backed off. And again the answer, from label general manager Andy Allen, is somewhat different, stressing not that world music is dead, but that it needs creative new approaches to come alive commercially.

"I think stars have to emerge that bring people into the genre," said Allen, "and I think it will happen. It may take 15 years like it's taken with reggae, and it may not be the form of music that we're hearing now. It may have many more influences incorporated into it. And it may just creep into the mainstream and we won't even notice that it's world music. Our hope is that through these kind of modern hybrid sounds, people go back and ask what came before. It's the same thing kids have been doing with classic rock all these years. There's a reason the Doors and Hendrix continue to sell.

"Frankly, Bob Marley is selling more records now than he ever did when he was alive and making records and on tour and we had all the traditional marketing elements," said Allen.